Design and Realization

Imagine a medium which doesn’t quite resist planned expression, but in which the result is “better” each time one just starts creating something, shaping it as one picks up cues from the work, sensing its possibilities and limitations (opened up/imposed by each manipulation).

In such a medium, the activity of design would be inseparable from the activity of realizing that design. Design and artifact would always co-evolve. And nobody would argue in favor of planning.

One could imagine a number of reasons for this medium favoring spontaneous rather than planned expression. One such reason could be unpredictability, randomness, that it would be impossible to anticipate the effects of planned manipulations. Nudge the work in one direction, it goes off in slightly another.

Another reason could be a combination of time and context, that the artifact would take shape over a longer period of time, in the very context where people would experience it. The context would be forever changing, and each planned manipulation of the work would have to be considered in light of how the context had changed. Also, each such manipulation would be a manipulation of the context itself. Nudge the work in one direction, and the expectations of people change, in turn changing the possibilities and limitations of future manipulations.

(A digression. I just imagined a medium where the act of creation implies first creating the conditions for the artifact, then launching the artifact into those conditions. As if one would sit at a large console, turning thousands of obscure dials and controls, then pulling a large red lever which would command a big machine to start manufacturing the artifact, and after a while the artifact would fall into a bin at the back of the machine. The only way of seeing the result would be to actually have it manufactured. Thus there would be a significant gap between imagining something and planning it, and being able to experience the result. Less immediacy. Unless the process of setting up the conditions would be too complex to be conducted in a planned manner, this medium would require planning. But if manufacturing was cheap and quick, and if deciding which dial to turn from studying the actual artifact was easier than envisioning an artifact and turning the dials accordingly, this medium would be more spontaneous; creating something would imply turning dials on chance, pulling the lever early, then making adjustments and pulling the lever again, frequently.)

I guess in some media, design and realization blend, while in others they are sharply separated.

This is a re-post from my old weblog Tesugen, originally written in 2005.